The SUV from the sheriff's department pulled to a stop near Mike's. Mike had moved his away from the house after we finished in the night. He didn't want to be closer than he needed to be. The deputy's door swung open and he stepped out. He seemed to scan the area, getting a feel for things. Then he said, "Did one of you call about a dead body?"
Mike and my sister were still sleeping in Mike's SUV. After he moved it, the two of them formed a pile in the back seat, covered themselves with their coats and a blanket, and hadn't made a peep since.
The Tech Team snoozed in the back of Matt's van, along with Max, the Beta Team camera operator. Sarah and Danny decided to walk around the house and barn in daylight to make sure things were still good, especially now that they knew what happened there.
That left me, standing between the van and SUV, and the dog, who was tied to the back of the van and tugging against his leash. "Hi," I said. "Yeah, we found a couple of skeletons in a hidden basement in the barn."
The deputy approached, giving a suspicious glance at the sleeping lump in Mike's SUV.
"That's my sister and her boyfriend. They had a long night."
As he got closer to me, he took out his notebook and a pen. "What were you folks doing in the barn?"
That was a very good question. Fortunately, I knew the answer, otherwise it would have been an even better question. "Dawn Miller from the Historical Society invited us down to do a paranormal investigation of the place before it gets bulldozed. We had one group in the house and one group in the barn all night."
"Paranormal investigation? And there's two groups of you?"
"My sister and her boyfriend, asleep over there, and me, I'm their camera guy, we were in the house. Danny and Sarah, with their camera guy Max, were in the barn. Then our tech guys, Matt and Fleet, his real name's Tyler, were in the van watching the equipment. I guess that's three teams altogether. Anyway, Danny and Sarah are over in the barn now looking at it in daylight. The rest are still sleeping in the van."
A short bark caught our attention.
"Oh yeah, that's Rumples. He's Danny's dog. We use him to help find raccoons and things that might be making spooky noises." I made the air quotes around the word "spooky" so the deputy wouldn't think I was a nut. Of course, that ship may have already sailed.
Rumples had stopped pulling against his leash and began staring toward the barn. We followed his lead and saw Danny and Sarah walking back toward us. The both waved and switched from a walk to a jog.
The deputy and I waited for them to get to us.
Rumples turned his attention back the other way and started straining again. There was probably a rabbit or something over in the garden.
"Good morning, Deputy!" Danny said with way too much enthusiasm. "You're gonna love what we found. I think we figured out what happened to Jacob Rumpe, you know, the farmer who disappeared back in the thirties."
"We'll come back to that. First, I'm going to need some particulars. Let's start with your names."
He quickly jotted down our names and had us roust to the other members of our group. Emily and Mike were not happy about leaving their hiding place, but the sight of sunlight helped.
As he finished, a late model brown sedan pulled into the driveway, past the deputy's SUV, and even with where we were gathered. It came to a quick stop with the window rolled down. The woman driving stuck her head out and shouted, "Good morning, Deputy Fairmont. I think there might be a big misunderstanding. I think these are the people we asked to be here."
We stood and waited while she got herself unstrapped from her seatbelt, gathered several handfuls of notebooks, and struggled to get out of the car.
As she got closer to us, the deputy nodded to her. "Good morning, Mrs. Miller. I was going to call to confirm that part of their story."
"We should have let you know that we made the arrangements," she told him. "Honestly, we just didn't think about it. Anyway, it's ok that they're here. They're just doing a little looking so we can record everything for history."
"I'm not here just because they're on county property. One of them called this morning to report a body."
The woman stepped back, literally. "A body?"
Danny piped up, "Oh yeah, I think we found Jacob Rumpe!"
That didn't seem to help. She was still thinking about a body, and attaching a name just made it a little more real. "Ok."
Rumples took that moment to finally break free of the knots holding to the bumper of the van. He ran directly to the edge of the garden, barked once, and sat down with his tail wagging wildly.
I leaned toward Danny and said, "You better go get your dog."
Danny gave a mildly embarrassed grin, shrugged his shoulder, and jogged toward the garden.
The deputy scowled a little while looking toward the garden. "Where'd you get that dog?"
"Rumples?" I said, "Danny got him a couple of years ago. He's a retired cadaver dog or something. I think his joints got too worn out so he couldn't do his job anymore."
Before I finished, the deputy was already headed to the garden.
Danny had gotten to the garden and was staring at the ground near where Rumples sat.
I decided to follow, a little worried that my camera rig was still in the van. Still, I wanted to see what was there.
As I came up, the deputy, who was now also looking at the ground, held up his hand behind him to signal that I stop.
Even from that short distance away, I saw what had them agitated. The root ball of some dried, dead plant had rolled up out of the ground, carrying with it a human skull.
"Ok," said the deputy, "I'm going to need all of you to move back and stay away from this area."
Danny stood staring, not moving.
Deputy Fairmont tapped him lightly on the arm. "Tell Rumples he's a good boy and take him back and give him a treat. He's earned it and I need you to vacate the immediate area."
Danny nodded. "Right, good boy." He blinked a couple of times, shuttered, and redirected his attention to Rumples. "Good boy, Rumples! You're a good boy. Come on, let's get you a treat." He grabbed Rumple's collar and led him back to the vehicles.
The deputy gave me a look to suggest he was serious about me backing off, and I was happy to do so.
Fairmont headed back to his SUV, walking past our Historical Society representative as he did so. "Looks like we're going to have some more history for you, Mrs. Miller." Reaching his SUV, he opened the door and grabbed the microphone for his radio. Rumpe Farm was going to get visits from many more sheriff's deputies, and maybe even the sheriff himself, whoever that was.
Back to the Books
Mrs. Miller, still slightly stunned, decided to revert back to her more usual manner. "I, uh, I brought some notebooks. We have newspaper clippings and reports that members have written about the farm. I thought they might help with your investigation." She turned and walked quickly to her car and set her books on the hood and began opening them. I got the impression that showing her clippings was her way of ignoring the dead bodies thing.
We gathered around her car, all of us except Sarah and Mike. They still stood huddled together by the van, not noticing anything, locked in their own little safe place.
"Now, most of the best articles are about that federal agent who was killed out here," Mrs. Miller started. She stumbled a little over the word "killed" but was able to push through. She flipped over a couple of pages in the notebook to show an old newspaper clipping.
The headline proclaimed, "Fed Hanged in Shootout at Rumpe Farm". Beyond the sensationalism of the line, many would want to read just to figure out how you get hanged in a shootout.
Then, it was our turn to be horrified, shocked, dumb-founded. All of us around the car took a step back as we saw it.
The paper showed a photo of a smiling federal agent in his suit and short haircut.
Danny pointed at the image and said what each of us knew. "That's Bub. That's the guy who showed us around last night."
Now that it was out, all of us reacted differently. Sarah and Danny hugged and jumped around, ecstatic that they'd had another supernatural experience. Matt's face flashed through his full range of confused and contemplative emotions. Fleet took on an expression of hopelessness, clutching his cut and walking backwards in small circles.
I wasn't really sure of my own reaction. Obviously I was shocked, but I think I coped by going into camera man mode and just watching everyone else. In class, I learned about photojournalists, including the videographers, who must exist in the moment but not participate. As soon as you are part of the story, you can't accurately capture it on film. I think that's what I did. I don't know what I looked like on the outside, how I expressed myself, because I stopped seeing myself as part of the situation.
What I did see was the confusion on Mrs. Miller's face. "What do you mean, last night? Didn't you just get here?"
Sarah and Danny stopped jumping for a moment for Danny to answer. "Last night, when we did the investigation."
"Didn't you get my email?" Miller went on. "We didn't have anyone available to meet you, so we needed to postpone until today."
"No, we didn't get any email. We showed up last night. The best part is that we did get shown around. That guy did it." Danny pointed at the clipping on the car hood.
"Ooh, I hope he showed up on camera!" Sarah squealed.
"But," Mrs. Miller muttered, "but he's dead. He's been dead for decades."
With all these emotions, I really wished I had my cameras.
Mrs. Miller turned slowly, walked back to the driver's side door, opened it, and got in. She sat in the driver's seat, hands on the wheel, and staring forward.
More Deputies
Within half an hour, a couple of other deputies arrived. They set up a boundary around the garden area and taped off the garage. By the time all of that finished, a total of seven sheriff's department SUVs filled the drive. We didn't get the actual sheriff, but we got a sergeant.
Each of us was pulled aside for interviews with the sergeant. After his talks with Emily and Mike, who could not be separated, I got called over.
"You are Josh Graves, is that correct?" he asked, notebook at hand.
I had been instructed a long time ago how to interact with law enforcement personnel. "Yes, sir."
"Alright, Mr. Graves, I'm Sergeant Hargrave and I'm trying to understand everything that happened here last night."
I nodded. He wasn't the only one who wanted to understand last night.
"Emily Graves is your sister and Mike Pedersen is her boyfriend. Is that correct?"
"Yes sir."
"Is it a healthy relationship?"
I didn't expect that question. "As far as I know."
He made some notes in his book. "They seem, how to describe it, a little freaked out this morning. Are they always like that?"
"No, sir," I answered.
I braced for the next question, but he just kept staring at me, like he was waiting for me to finish, but I was finished. What else would I have to say? It was just a moment, but I was very uncomfortable as though hours passed.
"Normally, they're full of energy and curiosity. She's real level-headed, she's an accountant."
He nodded and made more notes. "And what do you think got them all shook up this morning?"
That was a tough one. I wanted to tell him, or show him the video, or, better yet, bring him back at sundown and let him walk around in the basement. Oh, the basement. That was definitely the issue. Not the distant combine lights turning into a shootout and the hanging death of our guide. Definitely the basement.
"I'm not sure. It was a long, cold night, so they're probably tired. We had some weird lights, but we assumed they came from some distant combine working late on the harvest. Then we had an equipment malfunction down in the basement."
He raised an eyebrow. Oops.
"The basement, that's funny. Your sister and her boyfriend insisted that nothing happened last night, and they were extra insistent that nothing happened in the basement. In fact, they assured me that there was absolutely no reason to go into the basement at all. Why do you think that is?"
The memory of the basement brought up the absolute terror of being grabbed from all sides by disembodied hands, the flashing light and screaming beeps of the REM pod flooding my senses. Wait, that was it. That was something I could talk about.
"We had that equipment malfunction. The thing is called a REM pod and it detects disruptions to magnetic fields, like if a person or animal walks past it, the field changes and the machine knows. Well, it's supposed to give off beeps and flashing lights to notify you that something's there. Well, the one in the basement went wild for a while, flashing all of its lights in fast, weird patterns, and the buzzer was just shrieking. The whole thing was really disorienting in the dark. That, added to being really tired, might be messing them up today." It was a tapdance, and I wasn't sure he was buying it.
He seemed to finish writing. "This REM pod, is it still in the basement?"
"It should be. We haven't collected all our gear yet. We were waiting till the sun was a little higher and everyone was rested up."
He nodded. "Do you think it would pose a danger to any of my deputies if they went into the basement?"
Good question, and I had no idea. "It should be safe. It runs off batteries that should have run down by now. If you get to the stairs you would be able to hear it before going down."
He made a couple more notes before calling out, "Fairmont, Thompson, get over here."
Quickly as they could, two younger deputies came up, one of them the first one that arrived that morning. The sergeant issued orders, "Follow Mr. Graves here as he shows you how to get to the basement of the house. You are trying to retrieve a piece of equipment called a REM pod. Mr. Graves will describe it to you." He looked at me as though challenging me to refuse to help.
I had absolutely no plans to get on the bad side of this living law enforcement professional. I had my fill of a dead one the night before.
As we turned to go, he added, "See if you can borrow the dog to accompany you."
The dog? Rumples? The cadaver-sniffing dog? Why would we possibly need a cadaver-sniffing dog to go into the basement to collect the REM pod? What good would a cadaver dog do in a spooky, dark basement where hands reach out of the ground and walls to tear at your body? Oh crap.
I stumbled on my next step.
The deputies caught me by the arms. "Are you ok, Graves?" asked, I guess it was Thompson.
At times like that, I hated being named, "Graves". I really needed to do a name change. Maybe something cheery.
"Yeah, I'm ok. It's just been a long night."
Not only could we borrow Rumples, but Danny was totally in heaven that we might find another body buried somewhere on the site. I couldn't help but think that boy needed to switch to decaf.
Return to the Basement
We made it to the top of the stairs and stopped.
"What's the REM pod thing we're looking for?" Fairmont asked.
"It's a small, electronic device. It sits on a short tripod that lifts it about nine inches off the ground. There's a small speaker on top for beeping and a couple of small lights. I'm not hearing it, so the battery may be dead now."
Thompson pointed his flashlight down the stairs. "Is there anything else down there we should know about?"
Nothing I was going to talk about. "It's dirt floor, rough walls. There used to be shelves, but those are long gone. Mainly, there's no light."
Rumples barked once and took off down the stairs.
The deputies watched, turned to look at each other, then took off after the dog.
My filmmaker instincts told me to follow, to see what was going on. Memory of the night before froze my feet to the floor. It couldn't be that bad. The sun was up. There were deputies with guns there to keep me safe. That was their job, sort of.
I broke free and headed down.
All the lights of the REM pod were off. Something had knocked it over in the night. Best not to think about that.
More importantly, Rumples sat quietly and stared at a spot on the floor, his tail wagging excitedly.
The deputies stared at the floor as well, slowly passing their flashlight beams across the soil.
Fairmont noticed me and pointed to the REM pod. "Is that the gadget?"
"Yes, sir."
He reached down to collect it. "I'll take this to Hargrave and get the dog's owner. You wait here."
He turned and motioned me up the stairs. I guessed it was the other deputy who was to wait. Boy, was I happy about that.
We headed up and out, sending Danny to give Rumples a treat and tell him he was a good boy.
Hargrave took the REM pod and said they would give it back when their investigation was over. I was good with that.
I don't know why, but I asked, "Are you guys going to dig up the, uh, you know, the bodies?"
He shook his head. "No, we're waiting for specialists. These folks have been dead long enough that there's no hurry; we just want to be thorough."
Another thought occurred to me. "Do we need to wait around for the experts too?"
He gave me a short, weird smile. "No, we'll be done with you folks soon. We just want to make sure we have the whole story. Anything we can ask now means we don't need to find you later to ask. It shouldn't be much longer."
My turn to smile. "Thanks."
"When you do go, you may want to have your sister and that Mike guy get checked out by a doctor. Their strange behavior may be exhaustion but there may be something else. Maybe they got exposed to some mold or some old chemicals. Any time there's a severe behavior change, there's usually a reason and exposure to something unusual is a common reason."
That I could agree with. We had definitely been exposed to something unusual. I wasn't going to talk to the sergeant about it. Unless all of that showed up on camera, talking about it would just get me locked up and medicated.
I walked over to where Danny was tying Rumples back to the van bumper. Mike, Emily, and Sarah joined, so I hung back a little, still within earshot though. A little brother is gonna do what a little brother was gonna do.
Sarah put her hand on Emily's shoulder. "Are you guys alright? You've seemed a little disturbed since last night."
Emily just blinked and leaned into Mike, placing her head on his chest.
Mike answered for her. "We had a bad, uhm, experience last night. It was real bad. We saw things, felt things. It was, it was bad."
Danny added his hand to Mike's shoulder. "Oh man. I'm sorry. Is there anything I can do?"
Mike nodded. "Yeah. Emily and me, well we were already thinking about getting out of doing the investigations and, well, last night cemented that. We're not going to do it anymore."
Danny's face drooped in sadness and caring. His head tilted a little to the side.
Mike went on. "We discussed it. You and Sarah, you seem like you really like doing this, so you can have all the stuff. All the equipment, the organization name if you want it, even the SUV soon as we get home. I don't want us quitting to affect you."
Sarah leaned in to put her arms around Emily and Mike in a big hug.
Danny leaned in and hugged too. "Don't worry about it. We can figure things out later. Right now, I'm just worried about you two. Whatever happened, we need to make sure that you are alright."
They just stood like that in their group hug for at least fifteen minutes.
Matt called me over to the side door of the van. "The cops said we can collect our stuff from the barn and the house. You cool with helping?"
"Yeah, I'm alright, I think." The REM pod in the basement was already "collected" so it was just the other things in the house. With the bright sun running through the place, it was a different building. The ghosts of the night were gone. More importantly, it kind of felt like they were going to be gone anyway. Their stories had been resolved. The bodies were found. There were no more mysteries to bind those souls to the location.
It was over.
And it was over for us as well. About an hour and a half later, we were bundled up in our vehicles and headed down the road.
The sheriff's department vehicles still filled the driveway. We could barely see them through the dust as we trundled down the dirt road.
Epilogue
After the police investigation, the county decided not to bulldoze the entire site. The house was too far gone to save, so they took extensive photos, and video tour (shot by yours truly) and brought in some virtual reality people to take 3-D scans. With everything recorded, they tore it down. They placed memorial markers where John and Mary Rumpe's bodies were found.
The barn was in good enough condition to save. The Historical Society held a fundraiser to convert it into a museum. Law enforcement took all the firearms from the barn basement, but left the crates for display. The liquor bottles were likewise emptied. The trap door was locked in the open position, with a thick, glass floor placed over the opening.
For the team, well, some did better than others. Danny and Sarah got married, had kids, and continued with paranormal investigations. When the kids were old enough, they went along too. After many successful events and books, they became quite a hit in the paranormal community.
Max McDermott stayed on as their camera operator. In his spare time, he went to school to get a degree in psychology. He said he had a need to help people get through traumatic events.
Matt, the tech guy, also stayed on. It had always been a side gig for him, so it worked well. Of course, he was always safely locked in his van. The van did get a few more good luck charms and protective talismans over the years.
Fleet had a more tragic tale. He dropped the nickname and stuck with "Tyler". He devoted himself to helping at-risk youths with afterschool programs. To do even more good, he moved to a large city to combat gang violence. At the age of thirty-three, gang members came to his youth center to kill him. Reports said that his last words were, "If you kill me, my soul will fight you until the end of time." They shot him fourteen times.
A short time later, the murderers turned themselves in, claiming that, since they confessed they should be left alone. The youth center developed a history of strange things going on.
Then, there was my poor sister and her boyfriend. They stopped doing anything even remotely related to the paranormal. Each threw themselves into their work and other aspects of mundane life. In the end, that wasn't enough.
Emily sought therapy and was diagnosed with PTSD, but never told the docs what really happened. She worked on her issues and devoted herself to being the most professional accountant she could be.
She broke up with Mike.
Mike also showed signs of PTSD. He didn't try to get psychiatric help. Despite their pledge to each other not to do anything supernatural or similar, he joined the Catholic Church. This was the official argument between Mike and Emily, but it was enough. Last I heard, he was trying to become a monk or something.
That just left me: little brother and camera jockey.
I chose not to show any footage of the Rumpe Farm Investigation. The decision was about not embarrassing Emily and Mike. They had been through enough and didn't need the world bothering them.
It didn't keep me from making any money on the deal. I wrote the whole thing, with suitable changes of names and locations, into a screenplay and sold it. Some movie industry big-wigs are still passing it around to see who wants to do what with it. As long as the check clears, I don't care; I got student loans to pay.